


mōnstrāre

by monsterq



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Animal Traits, Blaviken (The Witcher), Blood As Lube, Body Shaming, Dehumanization, Dissociation, Fantasy Bigotry, Gen, Public Hand Jobs, Public Humiliation, Renfri lives, Restraints, Sexual Assault, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26622205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterq/pseuds/monsterq
Summary: The villagers of Blaviken want to know just how inhuman Geralt really is.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	mōnstrāre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/gifts).



> _mōnstrāre_ : to show or point out; to denounce or indict. From the noun _mōnstrum_ : a divine omen of misfortune; a monster; an object of fear or wonder.
> 
> For the prompt "humanism." Take that as you will.
> 
> Inspired by a prompt by [hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/profile).

Renfri’s eyes are wide. At her throat, dark blood pools, then spills. The world has frozen: a single stark, crystal instant.

The blade slips free and thumps to the ground.

As Renfri’s knees buckle, Geralt catches her. The moment he stabbed her is only a frantic haze, but this one seems to last forever, not letting him pull free.

Their eyes remain locked until the last breath escapes her lips.

Gradually the outside world filters back into his senses. Villagers are whispering. _Did you see what he…all those men like cattle…butcher…know he liked it…monster…_ His heart is a lead weight inside his chest, and it’s hard to move, let alone make choices. The tang of human blood chokes the air, flooding his nostrils with each breath. His head swims. He wonders if the blood could have crowded out the oxygen, leaving nothing for his lungs to use but hot and sticky death.

The throng around him is thicker than before. Geralt blinks. Everywhere, people are staring, revulsion clear on their faces. He wants to apologize, to tell them—but it doesn’t matter. He straightens to leave.

It feels wrong to leave Renfri behind. It’s as if something ties him to her, tugging at him when he tries to take a step. If he could just take her with him, give her a clean, honorable cremation, away from the wizard and the villagers…

But a rock thumps hard into his back, and the grumbling around him is swelling to a roar.

Geralt walks forward as if through water, pushing against the current. Another rock, this one knocking into the base of his skull, ignites a flare of nauseous pain. Someone shouts that witchers need slaughtering far more than anything they’ve killed. Others agree, their voices clattering: more stones.

Inside Geralt’s skull is a swamp, noxious and clogged with mud. It’s hard to think, but he doesn’t need to think, just to put one foot in front of the other. He barely registers the impacts against his unarmored body except as an echo of his heart and feet. The beats twine around each other like the curling strands of Renfri’s hair. To his left, one of Renfri’s men lies sprawled on his front, blood pooling beneath his face. Briefly, Geralt wishes he could lie down with him and rest.

No. It’s Geralt’s fault he’s dead. The least he can do is leave the man alone.

People are much closer now. Pressure of noise against his ears. Pressure of rope against his throat. Rope? It pulls tight, the coarse fibers abrading his skin, and yanks him backward; he goes, because it seems easiest. He doesn’t have the strength to kill another human, not today.

A sour sweat smell darting close to his side, the hilt of his sword twisted from his slack fingers, a crow of triumph. “I got it! I got it!”

The sword is passed back through the crowd, away from him. He watches it go.

It’s when they’re wrenching his arms behind his back and binding him that it occurs to him exactly how bad this is. But he can’t find the will to care. When it comes to it, if this is how he dies—at the hands of a braying mob after he’s shed enough human blood to bathe in—well, maybe that’s for the best.

“I heard witchers steal babies for their suppers, and that’s the real reason they take contracts—to get close. They think it’s their payment, see? And then they cook them up on a spit and eat them whole, like snakes do.”

“You’re wrong. Don’t you know they eat things raw? My cousin Bolek, he’s seen it. Picked up a cat and bit its head right off, fur and bones and brains and all. And it was still moving.”

They’ve pushed him to his knees. More rope secures his ankles to his thighs.

“Is that why they’ve got those horrible eyes, because they’re part snake? Can they open up their mouths like that too, to swallow you whole?”

“They’re not snake eyes, you fool. They’re cats’. You seen how they shine when the light hits at night? It’s enough to make a man’s blood run cold.”

“No, you both have it wrong. They’re hounds. Look at this one’s trinket.” A hand pulling at the chain around his neck. It catches in his hair, yanking strands out at the roots. “I heard they go into heat like bitches.”

“They’re freaks is what they are.” This man is looming in front of Geralt. He’s not used to looking up so far to see a face. Not a human one, at least. The man grasps Geralt’s jaw, twists his head from side to side, examining him like livestock. The smell of animal fat and greasy smoke wafts from his damp hand. “They can change shape, I heard tell. Turn into beasts.”

A woman spits. “Not so far to turn.”

Emboldened, the crowd tightens. Some step near enough to touch him. Geralt yanks at his bonds, but there’s no give, and his hands are too awkwardly tied to shape signs. As feet shuffle closer behind him, his breath comes faster.

“My gran says they’ve got horns, only they file ’em down so decent folk don’t know,” a younger woman says, her eyes shining. Braids are wrapped around her head. “Let’s see, then.”

Casually, she grabs a handful of his hair. He bares his teeth and snaps at her instinctively, but she gives the hair a hard tug, wrenching his neck. When he growls, she twists the hair around her fingers, locking them close to his skull. His roots burn, but he can’t pull away. With his thoughts as shapeless and sloppy as mud, he can’t even decide if he should try.

Others reach out now. Nails catch on his scalp, searching; fingers tangle in his hair and rub between the roots. Their scent will be all over him now, mingled with the blood.

“Find anything?”

“No,” says Braids. She’s disappointed. Then she cheers up. “Did you see his teeth, though? You can’t say those aren’t freak teeth. Look.” After casting around, she picks up a sturdy stick, which she jabs toward his face. Instinctively he jerks away, or tries to, but the grip on his hair is strong and doesn’t allow him more than an inch of movement. More hands hold his head steady as the stick prods at his mouth, gritty with mud. “See?” Braids says as she uses the stick to lift his upper lip. Rough bark, bitter taste. An artificial snarl. He’s held immobile, but something inside him curls up tight.

“Fangs,” Braids announces triumphantly. The stick scrubs across his teeth as she tries to point to his sharp left canine without letting his lip come unpinned. “D’you see? Pointy, like a damned mutt’s. He could rip a man’s throat out with those. You think he has?”

_Give me a chance and you’ll see for yourself,_ Geralt thinks, but he doesn’t know if that’s true. Maybe he’s drawn enough blood today. Maybe he deserves this.

“Does he have claws?” A new voice, curious.

The people behind him crowd closer, tug up his bound hands, straining his shoulders.

“Those aren’t claws.”

“They are too. Look how thick they are. He files them short so folk won’t see, but I bet if he didn’t, you’d see they’re like a beast’s.” Pressure on his fingernails, digging in. “Can’t fool us, though. You hear me, witcher? We know what you are.”

Do they? Maybe they’ll tell him.

When their nails graze one calloused palm, instinct takes over; he grabs the fingers and wrenches. Their owner cries out.

There’s a lot of commotion then, heartbeats spiking, sweat smells growing stronger, and he’s shoved forward onto his face as the trapped hand yanks free. Geralt licks dry lips and wonders why his mind isn’t working the way it usually does in a fight, making everything smooth and clear and simple. Instead it feels sluggish and distant. Muddy. More than anything, it reminds him of bleeding out.

“Bastard tried to break my hand! He’s a fucking animal!”

A boot in his side makes him grunt. Another grinds his face into the dirt.

“Worse than an animal. Those you can train, get something useful out of ’em. This is a devil.”

“How much you want to bet he has a tail?”

More talking, but he doesn’t follow it as it moves like waves over his head. He’s submerged, breathing murky water. The sea floor stirred up, sunlight rippling down in slivers.

Geralt breaks the surface with a jolt when a blade nicks the nape of his neck. It’s his sword, he realizes immediately, the steel blade. _Wrong one,_ he thinks with half his mind. _Steel for humans._

The blade parts his shirt with a rip, following the length of his spine, skipping over his hands, raising blood here and there where the point dips too low. Then it hooks under the waistline of his trousers and tears. As hands yank his clothes and underthings aside, he’s left bare, except for his boots.

His heart has sped up, and he’s panting now. _Like a dog,_ he thinks, and almost laughs. Nausea churns inside him.

Someone curses. “No tail. I’m out five denars.”

“He could’ve cut it off,” another voice says. Grease Smoke.

Clothes rustle as someone squats to peer closely at his tailbone. “Don’t see a scar. And he’s got enough of them everywhere else.”

Grease Smoke clicks his tongue. “Made a lot of enemies, hasn’t he? No wonder. Pity none of them finished the job. Well, you know what they say. If you want something done right…”

Geralt has slipped back under the quiet water, and it takes a while for the meaning of the words to filter down and find him. They’re going to kill him. Not exactly a surprise.

Another thought swims over: He has a duty.

Decades ago, in Kaer Morhen, a lesson was drilled into the boys: They were never to go down without a fight. They were what stood between the humans, often themselves vicious but even more often defenseless, and the monsters that wanted to steal children from their beds and tear the guts from widows. Decades later, he knows the picture is more complicated, but the essential idea has never left him. If he lets himself die, he has failed in his duty, and when more humans are slaughtered by monsters he could have dispatched, their deaths will be his fault.

So he draws a deep breath, mapping out his limbs, the rope, the sounds in the air, the bodies around him. Then he curls his toes under him, braces his feet, and strikes.

His shoulder catches someone in the gut. Someone else is knocked to the ground when his head rams into their knees. As he strains, the ropes tying his ankles to his thighs snap, and he lurches to his feet, unsteady with his legs still linked together, but there, yes—

The sword. He lunges, twists at the last moment. His cramped fingers manage to grip the hilt, and he spins the blade, hooks the rope around his ankles, and yanks, nicking his calf in the process, but the blood doesn’t matter, because his legs are free, and if he can just cut loose his arms—

A scream rises above the chaos, almost on the other side of the village square. When Geralt looks up, he sees a teenage boy with a knife to his throat.

“Drop the sword and get on your knees,” says Grease Smoke, a sneer on his lips and the boy’s jaw in his hand.

The boy is trembling even as he tries for stoicism. His chest is moving like a trapped bird, and Geralt can hear his fluttering heart from here. He presses his lips together, eyes flicking from person to person, to Geralt and away.

Geralt shakes his head. This doesn’t make sense. “He’s one of yours. Human.”

“Maybe so, but he’s a traitor, too. Said we should _leave you be_.” His voice goes high and whining in imitation. “It’s your choice, witcher. If he dies, it’s on you. He’s got no family, no one to miss him, and I won’t sleep any worse at night with a freak lover’s blood on my hands, but will you?” For a moment, Grease Smoke looks genuinely curious, like this is a fascinating experiment. “Would it bother you, to have his death on whatever you call your conscience?”

Geralt grinds out, “What do you want from me?”

“I told you,” says Grease Smoke. His knife digs harder into the boy’s neck. “Put down the sword, get down on the ground, and let us leash you like a good dog.”

That sparks a round of laughter.

Geralt stands there. The hilt of the sword is familiar in his hand, even though the angle is wrong. It’s slick with blood dripping from somewhere, maybe his back, and he has the sudden certainty that if he lets go, he’ll be letting go of everything.

_“Now,”_ Grease Smoke says, and the boy lets out a whimper that sounds much younger than he is as the knife parts the first layer of his skin.

Like a dam splintering before the pressure of a flood, Geralt’s fingers unfold. Someone lunges in to grab the sword as it falls. Geralt falls, too—sinks to his knees and keeps sinking. Under the waves again.

He’s been here before, this place deep inside himself where he can watch the world float by. As a foot crunches against his nose, as he’s shoved over sideways, as the villagers bind him as thoroughly as they know how, he remembers watching as others in his cohort were led away for the Trials. Waiting for his turn like an empty vessel, free of feelings, the screams of his agemates tearing through the air.

No choices.

His skin is bare. A breeze shivers across him, through him. Distantly, his shoulders ache with the tension forced into them. Blood runs from his nose into his mouth, rich and bitter.

The humans tug at him, twist him, flip him. Their voices rise and fall and ripple through his mind; he lets them go, doesn’t try to catch hold of the words.

Until Grease Smoke says, “Stefan owes me fifty denars. I said he’d have a beast’s cock, didn’t I?”

Another voice, dubious: “Doesn’t look that weird to me.”

“What are you, an expert? Look at the shape of it. This isn’t a man’s prick—it’s a dog’s sheath.”

“You mean the outer skin?” says the other voice.

“No, it’s too thick, see?” Fingernails on his shaft ignite a bright spark of pain, and he tries instinctively to curl up, to hide himself from the touch like a child, but he’s bound too tightly. He’d hoped they could skip this part.

Grease Smoke goes on, “You’ve seen dogs fuck, haven’t you? How their pricks slip out from the furry bit, all wet and shiny? The witcher’s like that, you mark my words. I bet he’s fooled some whores in his time, though.” He laughs. “Anyone up for another wager? How many of you think he ties like a dog, too?”

Whispers rise into giddy babble. A handful of people walk away, but others join the crowd. Sums are called out; bets are placed. Geralt closes his eyes and thinks, _You don’t have to do this,_ but the words never make it past his lips, because that doesn’t matter. Of course they don’t have to. They know that.

There are hands on him again, a cold hand on the jut of his hip, a sweaty hand playing with his cock—not like it’s trying to bring him off but like it’s examining a toy, or a large and unfamiliar insect. Geralt’s body twitches, tries to pull away, but nails dig into his foreskin again, pinching hard. He forces himself to still—at this point, there’s nothing else to do. The touch softens, returns to its examination: rubbing the skin between thumb and forefinger, tugging back his foreskin to examine the head. The grip releases, only for a finger to dip inside and swirl around the glans, ragged nail catching on the tender flesh, and Geralt locks his joints and breathes through his nose and isn’t there, isn’t there as hard as he possibly can.

“Hey, you,” Grease Smoke calls to someone. “You’ve bred dogs, haven’t you? Why don’t you get us our answer?”

The man who responds sounds nervous. The others cajole him until he approaches, and Geralt opens his eyes and sees a sharp-faced man with a well-groomed mustache. When he crouches down and wraps his hand around Geralt’s cock, though— _it’s just your body, it doesn’t matter, it’s just your body_ —the man gains confidence. “What you have to do to start with, see,” he tells his audience, and Geralt presses the side of his face into the gritty mud, “is pull the sheath back enough that you can get at the head.” He does so. It’s not gentle, and it would hurt if Geralt were really there. “Normally I’d have something ready to catch the seed when it spills—this is if you can’t breed the hounds the old-fashioned way—but I guess we don’t need that here.”

Scattered snickers. Mustache looks pleased.

“It helps if you’ve got a bitch in heat to get the dog excited,” he goes on, “because then it’ll hump into your hand and do all the work for you. But we’ll get by without.” Suddenly his voice changes. “Stop that.” A sharp smack is delivered to Geralt’s thigh, and Geralt realizes he was squirming, trying to inch away from the too-tight grip. Mustache shifts to kneel on Geralt’s legs, pinning him down with his weight.

“Dogs have an advantage, you know,” he says, returning to his lecture. “A dog has a bone in its cock to keep it stiff, so it can enter the bitch whenever it wants, if it can get at her. We men don’t have it so easy.”

“What about the witcher’s cock? Does it have a bone?” someone asks.

Mustache puts his index finger and thumb on either side of the base of Geralt’s cock and uses them to wobble it back and forth. Then he flicks the head. “No,” he announces.

“You think it isn’t a dog cock after all?”

Mustache shrugs. “Too soon to say. There may not be a bone, but it’s got an odd shape to it. See how pointed the head is? And how the shaft is thickest in the middle? And look how far the foreskin—or sheath, if you’re right—pulls back. As for the bulb at the base…” His fingers crawl, squeeze. “Well, sometimes you can feel it even with the hound at rest, but not always. In this case, I have to admit I’m not sure. Still, I’d wager it isn’t a man’s organ. In all likelihood, it’s mutated, like the rest of him.”

He shifts his grip. “Now, you want to stroke it hard and fast, understand? Dogs don’t appreciate romance.” Another wave of laughter jostles Geralt, and he bobs in the murky water. Mustache follows his own advice, jacking Geralt’s cock with a ruthless, tight fist, and it’s dry as sandpaper and it hurts, and it shouldn’t be anything compared to stabs or burns or flesh torn by razor teeth, it shouldn’t, it isn’t—

Despite everything, the stimulation is forcing him hard, and Mustache sees and makes an approving noise. Someone else traces a light finger across his balls, and Geralt does nothing to stop it. His mouth is dry, his throat dry, his hands clenched into fists behind his back. He hopes Roach is all right, alone in the woods with his things. He’s left her for much longer, but what if this time, she eats something she shouldn’t and gets sick? What if she’s attacked or stolen? What if she wanders away and is lost forever?

“With your average hound, it doesn’t take long,” Mustache says, still pumping away. At this point he’s clearly enjoying his appreciative audience. “Usually only twenty, thirty seconds before it spills. The bulb will swell up as it gets excited, same way a man gets hard, only the point is to lock it with the bitch, see. Well, this one’s hard”—he gestures at Geralt, curled on his side on the ground—“but there’s no knot yet. But like I said, there’s also no bone, so maybe it makes sense, stiffening up first. Who can say with a mutant? Either way, we’ll see soon enough.”

For a while, finally, Mustache’s lecture stops, and there’s only motion, friction—a tingling, burning sensation, like being covered with fire ants. In the silence, Geralt can hear himself panting again, every now and then a whine escaping through his teeth. Maybe he’s not humping into Mustache’s fist like the dogs the man has bred, but he’s not any more in control. And he’s much less valuable.

“It’s been more than a minute,” someone points out, maybe bored, maybe restless.

“Well, a fist’s not as wet as a cunt,” says someone else. “Maybe he’ll spill if you add some slick. Anyone got something to use?”

“Could just spit.”

“No, use the blood, stupid. It’s all over his face.”

“It won’t stay slick for long.”

“Yeah, well, he said it wouldn’t _take_ long, didn’t he?”

Apparently Mustache finds this argument convincing, because a hand swipes across the mess of Geralt’s face, jarring his nose and making him groan. Sticky with blood, Mustache’s fingers move down to wrap around Geralt’s cock again, and the worst part is how good it feels in contrast to what came before. The blood is thick, tacky, but still wet; it adds the barest slide to Mustache’s grip, and Geralt sinks his too-sharp teeth into his lip and tries not to cry out. But there’s nothing he can do to stop his body responding.

It’s subtle, various bedmates have assured him over the years, and sometimes he’s even believed them. But all eyes are on him now, and no one misses it when the base of his cock swells like ripened fruit, marking him as starkly as his hair and slit eyes.

The crowd breaks out in exclamations of triumph, disgust, delight. Someone calls, “All right, all those with money on dog cock—”

People are pushing closer to Mustache. Fingers graze over the bloody swell of Geralt’s knot, then squeeze. A choked noise forces its way from between Geralt’s gritted teeth, but he’s holding onto the edge with his nails—his claws—fighting himself with everything he’s got, and he doesn’t even know why. What good will it do to draw this out? Better to get it over with. _Relax,_ he tells himself, but he can’t. He can’t stop fighting any more than he can win.

Then another hand reaches out and pets his hair. Fingers carding through the dirty strands, like petting a dog. Scratching gently at his scalp.

Geralt comes.

It’s not the most unpleasant orgasm he’s ever had, but it’s close. Its only redeeming feature is that for a moment, at least, silence rings in his ears. With his eyes squeezed shut and his breath frozen in his lungs, the hands having finally retreated, he can almost pretend he’s alone. He can almost pretend that he’s already died. That he’s bled out in the dirt like Renfri. _Fuck, Renfri._

But soon, sound filters back.

“Missed your chance to collect the seed,” someone comments. “It’s all in the dirt now.”

Grease Smoke scoffs. “Why? Last thing we need is more like this one.”

“They can’t have young anyway,” someone else informs the others. “That’s why they need to steal ours.”

“Look, will all of you stop fucking around? Your curiosity’s been satisfied. Kill him already. There’s the wizard—maybe he’ll have use for the body.”

The wizard. Stregobor.

Geralt opens his eyes.

At the edge of the square, Stregobor is standing, looking over the crowd with a tiny smile on his lips. _Should have known he was there,_ Geralt thinks—his scent is unmistakable, perfume and dust and a hint of blood. But the pressure of the ocean has fled, and with it the atmosphere: he’s unanchored and airless, suspended in blinding light.

Stregobor’s gaze roves across the square, then settles somewhere to the side. Renfri’s body. As Stregobor begins to walk toward her, unhurried, Geralt wants to lunge up and grab him—an arm around his throat, or even a fist in his hair. He wants to leap between them and keep him from her with the edge of his blade. As it is, all he can do is snarl wordlessly, the sound cracked and useless in the back of his throat.

“A bit late, aren’t you?” Braids asks. She’s folded her arms, utterly nonchalant about the naked, bloodied mutant hog tied in the dirt behind her.

Stregobor smiles at her. “I saw that, quite understandably, you all needed time to vent your feelings,” he says. “I regret that I couldn’t help you while these butchers brought you such pain, but by the time I might have joined you, it was clear you had things well in hand.” He’s passed out of Geralt’s field of vision, as much as he strains his neck, but he can hear his steps pause, his clothing rustle as he stoops. When he speaks next, there’s an odd note in his voice. “And I thought I felt…”

What happens next is a shock of sound and motion. A scrape, clatter, and gasp, following one another so closely that they’re part of the same sound; then, as a dozen people draw breath to shout, there’s a sound that Geralt would know in his sleep, would know underwater, would know after a thousand years of silence: a blade sliding home in living flesh.

He twists, kicks, but he can’t get up or find a view. People are screaming now, rushing in all directions. Flesh tears, and the blade sings back into open air; something heavy hits the ground.

Other weapons are unsheathed or grabbed. Geralt is left alone, fighting uselessly against his bonds, as the smell of new blood joins his in the air.

Then a voice, one that makes him freeze. “I came here to kill the wizard, and I’ve done it. But if you don’t move aside right now, I won’t leave a single soul in this godforsaken village alive.”

It’s her. But it can’t be her.

“You’re bluffing,” someone scoffs. “Perhaps you’ll cut down a few, but there are too many of us. You aren’t the only one with a blade.”

“That may be so,” she agrees, “but as far as I’m aware, I am the only one with _this_.”

He can’t see what she shows them, but there’s a hush.

“And what is that?” someone blusters. “A lady’s bauble?”

“It holds a powerful spell. If I break it, you’ll all be dead before you take another step.”

“You’re lying.”

“Oh? I couldn’t possibly have magic at my fingertips? And when I rose from the dead to cut down my enemy, was that just a trick of the light? Look, you have a choice. You can find out whether I’m telling the truth—or whether my skill with a blade might be greater than you know—or you can step aside, and once I’ve left your village, I won’t trouble you again.”

The villagers are silent. Still. Then, slowly, they back toward the walls, leaving a clear path across the square.

At the end of it is Renfri.

Geralt stares at her, and she stares back. The wound is gone from her throat, as if it were never there, and she’s picked up her sword and dagger. He can’t think or reason or even wonder—the fact of her just keeps repeating in his mind like a thunderclap, all else empty and blank.

She strides forward, sliding the sword back into its sheath but keeping the dagger at the ready. As she walks, someone whispers, “Witch,” and someone else, louder, says, “Abomination.” When she stops, crouches, and uses the blade to slice through Geralt’s bonds—the sudden release of tension makes him gasp—angry murmurs grow in the crowd.

“You said nothing of bringing the freak,” someone calls.

She ignores them. “Can you stand?”

He nods. Forces himself to his feet, though his legs shake, and his head goes light. Is he dreaming? Is he already dead?

As he looks around, his eyes catch on the pile of rags that used to be his clothes. The distance seems to stretch as he crosses it, ignoring the stickiness on his thighs. Villagers shrink away from him, some refusing to meet his eyes and others with venom in their glares. He stoops and gathers up the heap of cloth and leather. Can it be repaired? Unlikely. Still, he can’t bring himself to abandon it. He can use the cloth for bandages, if nothing else. Bunched up in his fist, it hovers in front of him, useless and heavier than it should be. He checks that nothing has gotten bundled in with the clothes, just in case.

He’s never been body shy, not really. There’s no time for such concerns when you grow up in a castle of men and boys training to be warriors. He doesn’t _like_ his body, exactly, scarred and strange as it is, but he’s never spent much time thinking about it. Now, though, the hand holding what used to be his clothes moves as if by itself in front of his hips, and he avoids looking straight at anybody. The ants are back, prickling across his skin: his thighs, his chest, his face.

And his sword is nowhere in sight. Can he leave without it? He can’t. He has to.

Renfri’s eyes flick over him when he returns. Her jaw is clenched, and she says only, “Let’s go,” and sets off.

The crowd seems to be growing larger as he walks after her—and louder, too. _Freaks,_ he hears again and again, and _butchers._ Someone spits at him; foam spatters by his left foot, and he steps over it.

They pass a body—another of Renfri’s men—slumped against a wall, blood streaked on the stone and soaking into the dirt. Still, she says nothing.

And then a stone comes slicing through the air from the crowd. Geralt sees it but doesn’t bother to catch it; it thumps against his shoulder, the one that’s abraded from his struggles in the dirt.

Renfri whips around. Her eyes dart across the line of villagers to Geralt’s right. “Who threw that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Geralt mutters. “Come on.”

“It matters.” But reluctantly, she takes another step.

That’s when the second stone strikes Geralt’s back.

In a moment, she whirls, and the rock is in her hand. With all her strength, she hurls it back, and it flies in reverse along its first trajectory. Grease Smoke, a third stone between his fingers, grunts as it smacks him in the chest.

Not satisfied with that small retaliation, she scoops up another rock. “Renfri,” Geralt says. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” The fall of her hair hides her face from him, but he can hear the barely throttled rage in her voice.

“It won’t make a difference.”

“It’ll make me feel better.”

The villagers are staring. He searches for a reason she’ll accept. All he comes up with is, “Let’s just go. Please.”

She sighs, her shoulders going slack, and drops the stone. “Fine.” Then she tilts her head. “Do you want his clothes?”

“What?”

“To wear,” she says. Grease Smoke sputters, outraged, but she doesn’t acknowledge him. “Seems only fair. I can make him—”

“No,” Geralt says. His heart is pounding again. He feels sick with the thought of Grease Smoke’s clothes on his skin, and he doesn’t know if the sickness is worse than the crawling, flaying touch of the villagers’ eyes, but there’s no other answer to give. When she raises a brow, he adds, “I have a change of clothes with my—somewhere else.” He’s afraid to mention Roach, as if the villagers might rush out to slay her at the reminder.

She shrugs, unfazed by Grease Smoke’s glare. “Suit yourself.” They walk out of town in a thunderous silence. A stillness as thick as clotting blood.

Fifty yards down the path, Geralt says, “I killed you.”

“You thought you did.” Her voice is deceptively light.

“You were dead,” he insists. He wants to argue further, but words are difficult to dredge up from his throat.

She doesn’t speak for a few paces. Then she reaches for her throat and pulls free a necklace that was hidden beneath her clothes. It’s a red teardrop pendant hanging from a silver chain. She unhooks it and passes it to Geralt, and he brushes his thumb over the smoothness of the stone, warm from her body. She tells him, “I bought it from a witch. She set it to activate on my command.”

He waits.

“It’s a spell of illusion and thought control. Makes me seem dead and blurs the witnesses’ immediate memories. Add a little suggestibility for them, a little paralysis for me…” Renfri laughs, the sound bitter. “One dead princess, served up to Stregobor free of charge.”

There are questions he should ask, he knows, things he should want to understand. Hows and whys. But language feels so far away right now, and anyway, he can’t find the curiosity. He concentrates on his feet and the rhythm of their impact against the long dirt road.

“The spell…it was designed to break only when Stregobor was near,” Renfri says after a few minutes. Her voice is quieter.

Geralt grunts.

“I mean, that was the point of it. Keep me still and dead and bait until I could get at him to kill him.”

He nods. Wonders what she’s getting at.

“So before that…I couldn’t…” He hears the click as she swallows, her throat too dry.

He doesn’t look at her as he asks, “You were…aware?”

Her hand traces the grip of her dagger in its sheath. “Yes.”

They walk in silence, feet falling in and out of synchrony.

When they enter the forest, Geralt fills his mind with its sounds: creatures scratching in the underbrush, the murmur of the stream, arguing birds chasing each other between trees, and there—yes—Roach. He quickens his pace. Nothing in the world sounds better right now than being on her back, in his spare clothes, and riding far, far away from Blaviken.

They reach the clearing where they spoke and lay together last night. Roach is grazing on the young grass sprouting in a patch of sunlight. He crosses to her. Quickly, like the words burn her throat, Renfri says, “It wasn’t part of my plan, what happened to you.”

He hums. Doesn’t ask if it was worth it. Roach stops eating and noses at his bare shoulders. He strokes a hand down her neck to greet and reassure her, then opens his pack and pulls out his spare clothes.

Renfri’s staring at him, waiting for a response, maybe, but he doesn’t have one. After washing the fluids from his skin in the river and drying with the handful of rags, he pulls his clothes on, resisting the absurd urge to hide behind a tree.

“I’m curious,” she adds, her tone different, when his armor settles over his shoulders. “Do you really wish I’d died instead of Stregobor?”

His jaw tenses. “No,” he forces out. “I wish no one had died at all.”

“But they did. Because I didn’t walk away. Because I’m a monster.”

He turns his face away from the words. “I didn’t mean that. I was wrong.”

“No,” she tells him. “You were right. I am a monster, and so are you. That’s why they do what they do to us. That’s where you have it wrong, Geralt. We’re monsters _first_.”

He doesn’t have an answer. Burying his face in Roach’s mane, he inhales her scent. He’s cold, even though he’s no longer bare. But he’s used to being cold, and he knows how to stop himself from shivering.

He’s alone when he rides out of the forest a few minutes later. Renfri slipped away without saying goodbye, and he tells himself he didn’t expect anything different. As he emerges from the tree line, something makes him glance at the ground—maybe the sunlight glinting off a line of metal in the weeds. He slips off Roach and crouches down. He has to run his fingers over the object before he believes it’s really there. His steel sword, dirty and a little bloody, smudged with fingerprints.

His nostrils flare. He listens. Someone is hiding in the trees at the edge of the woods: nervous sweat, a racing heart. He turns his head.

The boy no longer has a knife to his throat, but he still looks scared, peering out from behind a knotted trunk. Their eyes meet for a second. Only a second.

Then Geralt dips his chin, sheathes his sword, and mounts Roach again. He lets the sound of her hooves drown out both their heartbeats, and the movement shakes him from his body. Weightless, he drifts into the empty vault of the sky.


End file.
